Quest has worked to develop an app for smartphones that lets you download your results directly to your phone. You can then send them out as you need to. I think it also lets you manage your Rx’s, doctor’s contact info, etc. Pretty cool…
Unfortunately, Virginia is stuck in the stone ages, medically, and is one of the 13 states that do not allow their health patients to receive results directly from labs…
I’m curious if anyone has used this and what they thought about it…
Looks like its coming soon for Android phones, but that same banner has been on there since November so who knows when they will finally get around to releasing it…seems to be available on iphone and most popular versions of blackberry though…
If you do labs yourself, via LEF.org, they will email a pdf of your results and a hardcopy as well. This cannot be done in NY, not aware of problems elsewhere. With LEF, it is done via a doctor and LEF sends the results to you as his agent, from a legal point of view. There are other organizations that do similar things. I am surprised that Quest is doing this. I assume that one’s doctor authorizes this and then Quest is acting as the doctors agent. Using a smart phone to do these things does not make me excited.
For the Quest app, you do not have to have your doctor’s permission if you live outside of the 13 states that prohibit patients from receiving results directly…those states (correctly) view your medical information as YOUR medical information and do not require a doctor to nanny you…
I think what you are talking about with LEF is they have just standardized their process to account for the nazi-states…for instance in Virginia, I CAN get a copy of my test results sent to me, but the doctor has to indicate such on the script (ie Quest is acting as the doctor’s agent)…when I go get my blood drawn in DC, it is a non-issue and they send it to me regardless…no doctor proxy or instruction needed…
I use the app now and it’s pretty cool. I also somehow get results from Quest in my google health account without getting a pin number from my Dr. I think it’s related to me using Gazelle but I’m not sure.
The Gazelle app is pretty neat but you can only request labs back about 2 months so do it soon after your lab. You don’t get reference range either so you may have to look them up on Quest’s website. You can e-mail your results right from your smart phone too.
With the Google Health - Quest link you can view the actual lab reports and it will chart your numbers if you have multiple labs for the same thing over time. I recommend trying to get this to work for you.
The day of patients being able to have their own electronic medical record is here.